Happy Late Easter!

This is the cake I made for some friends that I spent this past Easter with, everyone loved it. I've had requests ever since to make another one. I am not going to lie this is probably the best chocolate cake I have ever made and probably top 10 as far as chocolate cakes I've ever had. Except cheesecakes because let's face it, cheesecake is always amazing and at the top of my list.

I think the best part about this cake is the grass that is used to make a nest for the marshmallow chicks and used to surround the cake. It's eatable! And by eatable I mean you can eat it. It had a weird, plain taste but was oddly addicting. My friend Nick was munching on it the whole ride to WV. Fortunately for him I was able to get a picture of the finished product before he cleaned the grass off one side of the cake.

This was the first time I successfully made a really good homemade chocolate frosting. I tend to use dark chocolate and I forget that the bitter dark chocolate tends to have is more of an acquired taste. So this time I mixed powdered sugar and heavy cream to balance it out.

I have no problem being cocky about this cake because basically it was awesome and if you know me I'd suggest you ask me to make you one.

:]

St. Patty's Day

It's been a while so I'm going to try and update some holiday themed goodies for events that have already passed.
These are from a St. Patrick's Day potluck at work, they were a hit!
The ones with the green icing are vanilla cupcakes with green tinted buttercream frosting while the chocolate ones are a little bit more exotic. They are double chocolate cupcakes with a pistachio truffle on the inside, sprinkled with pistachios on top. The combination of the salty nuts with the bittersweet dark chocolate was a amazing but you have to be a chocolate fan to like them. I think it was a bit much for the folks at work.
Thinking back the icing on top of the chocolate ones wasn't that great, I just whipped the chocolate and cream mixture that I use for my chocolate ganache and it was way too bitter for a cupcake that was so rich to begin with. In the future I'll be sure to use the frosting recipe I mention in my Easter post.

I tend to switch off between calling it frosting or icing, wtf is the difference?